(Born; Leipzig, 22 May 1813; Died; Venice, 13
Feb 1883). German composer. He was the son either of the police actuary Friedrich Wagner,
who died soon after his birth, or of his mother's friend the painter, actor and poet
Ludwig Geyer, whom she married in August 1814. He went to school in Dresden and then
Leipzig; at 15 he wrote a play, at 16 his first compositions. In 1831 he went to Leipzig
University, also studying music with the Thomaskantor, C.T. Weinlig; a symphony was
written and successfully performed in 1832. In 1833 he became chorus master at the
Würzburg theatre and wrote the text and music of his first opera, Die Feen; this
remained unheard, but his next, Das Liebesverbot, written in 1833, was staged in
1836. By then he had made his début as an opera conductor with a small company which
however went bankrupt soon after performing his opera. He married the singer Minna Planer
in 1836 and went with her to Königsberg where he became musical director at the theatre,
but he soon left and took a similar post in Riga where he began his next opera, Rienzi,
and did much conducting, especially of Beethoven.

In 1839 they slipped away from creditors in
Riga, by ship to London and then to Paris, where he was befriended by Meyerbeer and did
hack-work for publishers and theatres. He also worked on the text and music of an opera on
the 'Flying Dutchman' legend; but in 1842 Rienzi, a large-scale opera with a
political theme set in imperial Rome, was accepted for Dresden and Wagner went there for
its highly successful première. Its theme reflects something of Wagner's own politics (he
was involved in the semi-revolutionary, intellectual 'Young Germany' movement). Die
fliegende Holländer ('The Flying Dutchman'), given the next year, was less well
received, though a much tauter musical drama, beginning to move away from the 'number
opera' tradition and strong in its evocation of atmosphere, especially the supernatural
and the raging seas (inspired by the stormy trip from Riga). Wagner was now appointed
joint Kapellmeister at the Dresden court.

The theme of redemption through a woman's
love, in the Dutchman, recurs in Wagner's operas (and perhaps his life). In 1845 Tannhäuser
was completed and performed and Lohengrin begun. In both Wagner moves towards a
more continuous texture with semi-melodic narrative and a supporting orchestral fabric
helping convey its sense. In 1848 he was caught up in the revolutionary fervour and the
next year fled to Weimar (where Liszt helped him) and then Switzerland (there was also a
spell in France); politically suspect, he was unable to enter Germany for 11 years. In
Zürich, he wrote in 1850-51 his ferociously anti-semitic Jewishness in Music (some
of it an attack on Meyerbeer) and his basic statement on musical theatre, Opera and
Drama; he also began sketching the text and music of a series of operas on the Nordic
and Germanic sagas. By 1853 the text for this four-night cycle (to be The Nibelung's
Ring) was written, printed and read to friends - who included a generous patron Otto
Wesendonck, and his wife Mathilde, who loved him, wrote poems that he set, and inspired Tristan
und Isolde - conceived in 1854 and completed five years later, by which time more than
half of The Ring was written. In 1855 he conducted in London; tension with Minna
led to his going to Paris in 1858-9. 1860 saw them both in Paris, where the next year he
revived Tannhäuser in revised form for French taste, but it was literally shouted
down, partly for political reasons. In 1862 he was allowed freely into Germany; that year
he and the ill and childless Minna parted (she died in 1866). In 1863 he gave concerts in
Vienna, Russia etc; the next year King Ludwig II invited him to settle in Bavaria, near
Munich, discharging his debts and providing him with money.

Wagner did not stay long in Bavaria, because
of opposition at Ludwig's court, especially when it was known that he was having an affair
with Cosima, the wife of the conductor Hans van Bülow (she was Liszt's daughter); Bülow
(who condoned it) directed the Tristan première in 1865. Here Wagner, in depicting
every shade of sexual love, developed a style richer and more chromatic than anyone had
previously attempted, using dissonance and its urge for resolution in a continuing pattern
to build up tension and a sense of profound yearning; Act 2 is virtually a continuous love
duet, touching every emotion from the tenderest to the most passionately erotic. Before
returning to the Ring, Wagner wrote, during the mid-1860s, The Mastersingers of
Nuremberg: this is in a quite different vein, a comedy set in 16th-century Nuremberg,
in which a noble poet-musician wins, through his victory in a music contest - a victory
over pedants who stick to the foolish old rules - the hand of his beloved, fame and
riches. (The analogy with Wagner's view of himself is obvious.) The music is less
chromatic than that of Tristan, warm and good-humoured, often contrapuntal; unlike
the mythological figures of his other operas the characters here have real humanity.

The opera was given, under Bülow, in 1868;
Wagner had been living at Tribschen, near Lucerne, since 1866, and that year Cosima
formally joined him; they had two children when in 1870 they married. The first two Ring
operas, Das Rheingold and Die Walküre, were given in Munich, on Ludwig's
insistence, in 1869 and 1870; Wagner however was anxious to have a special festival opera
house for the complete cycle and spent much energy trying to raise money for it.
Eventually, when he had almost despaired, Ludwig came to the rescue and in 1874 - the year
the fourth opera, Götterdämmerung, was finished - provided the necessary support.
The house was built at Bayreuth, designed by Wagner as the home for his concept of the Gesamtkunstwerk
('total art work'- an alliance of music, poetry, the visual arts, dance etc). The first
festival, an artistic triumph but a financial disaster - was held there in 1876, when the
complete Ring was given. The Ring is about 18 hours music, held together by
an immensely detailed network of themes, or leitmotifs, each of which has some allusive
meaning: a character, a concept, an object etc. They change and develop as the ideas
within the opera develop. They are heard in the orchestra, not merely as 'labels' but
carrying the action, sometimes informing the listener of connections of ideas or the
thoughts of those on the stage. There are no 'numbers' in the Ring; the musical
texture is made up of narrative and dialogue, in which the orchestra partakes. The work is
not merely a story about gods, humans and dwarfs but embodies reflections on every aspect
of the human condition. It has been interpreted as socialist, fascist, Jungian, prophetic,
as a parable about industrial society, and much more.

In 1877 Wagner conducted in London, hoping to
recoup Bayreuth losses; later in the year he began a new opera, Parsifal. He
continued his musical and polemic writings, concentrating on 'racial purity'. He spent
most of 1880 in Italy. Parsifal, a sacred festival drama, again treating redemption
but through the acts of communion and renunciation on the stage, was given at the Bayreuth
Festival in 1882. He went to Venice for the winter, and died there in February of the
heart trouble that had been with him for some years. His body was returned by gondola and
train for burial at Bayreuth. Wagner did more than any other composer to change music, and
indeed to change art and thinking about it. His life and his music arouse passions like no
other composers. His works are hated as much as they are worshipped; but no-one denies
their greatness.

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